Exciting news! The Stahlhelms Museum has acquired an amazing WWII Airborne collection. Shelby Spradlin enlisted Oct 9, 1942, and entered active service on Apr 5, 1943, in Blacksburg, VA. After basic training, Shelby was sent to England in August of 1944, with the 17th A/B Division. As the war was nearing its end, Shelby was one of 16,000 paratroopers who participated in “Operation Varsity” which ended up being the last airborne drop of WWII on March 24, 1945. Shelby’s unit participated in 3 battles / campaigns: Ardennes, Rhineland & Central Europe. At the end of WWII in Europe, Shelby was transferred to the 82nd Airborne to assist with the occupation of Berlin. He finally returned home on Jan 3, 1946.
Stahlhelms.com is dedicated to preserving the history of WWI and WWII. We have created this site to assist the militaria collector, re-enactor and general WWI & WWII historian.
Since 1989, Stahlhelms Military Collectibles has collected military artifacts from the United States, Germany, and Japan. The main focus of our museum is WWI and WWII, but we are looking to expand to the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War as our collection grows.
This website is organized into specific pages that allow the reader to view genuine military items from WWI & WWII in our Museum section, read our reviews of some of the east coast’s best living history events such as the MAAM WWII Weekend in the Reenactor section, view pictures and videos of some of our favorite air shows like Airfest at the NAS in Wildwood in the Air Show section, and view pictures from the car shows like the Mushroom Festival that we enter our WWII Jeep & WWII Mini Jeep in the Car Show section.
Our collection at Stahlhelms.com continues to grow as we are always buying new items for our collection so check back often.